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10
“Do you have any tattoos?” Bronte asked, and Chris lifted his knee to the couch as he dropped his arm on the back of it, his fingers landing near Bronte’s shoulder. She jerked her eyes to them, as if to keep track of where his hands were. He was trying to keep them to himself, but Jesus, she was killing him.
“Nah. No tattoos. When I was a kid, I wanted one so bad, but my parents would have killed me…your body is a temple and all that. By the time I was on my own, I don’t know, it didn’t seem as important to piss them off anymore.”
She tilted her head. “That’s why you wanted a tattoo? To piss your parents off?”
He leaned into her. “Yeah. Like I said, idle hands. So? What else do you have?” When she didn’t move, he gave her his best smile, his voice low and pleading. “Come on, you know you want to show me.” Lowering his mouth near her ear, he added, “Please, Bronte.”
She shivered and let out a breath. “Fine.”
He barely contained his fist pump, and she playfully rolled her eyes as she lifted her hair, turning her back to him.
“What’s this?” He restrained himself from touching the skin where a small scale was tattooed below her hairline.
“Symbol for libra,” she said, circling back around to face him.
“Why on your neck?”
She lifted one shoulder. “I get them in places where they aren’t really visible.”
“Isn’t that why you get tattoos? So people will see?”
“No. I get them for me.” That cute crinkle between her eyebrows appeared. “If you were going to get a tattoo, what would it be?”
“An old-school pinup, right on my bicep,” he tossed out, sitting up taller. He’d gotten a taste of her spirit, a little shy, a little playful, and now he wanted more. Might never be satisfied at this point. “Any others?”
“Wait,” she said with a laugh, pressing her hand against his chest to force him back against the other end of the sofa. “I want to hear more about why. It sounds like your parents were really strict.”
He wiped his hand over his mouth and beard, trusting Bronte to tell her about his past but unsure if he trusted himself not to tell her everything. With a quick glance her way, he cleared his throat. “You really want to know?”
“Of course,” she said with an encouraging smile.
Chris never liked to talk about his family, even basic facts about them, and only ever told the whole truth to Wes because he had to know—he had to deal with the aftereffects—so he wasn’t sure where exactly to start.
She offered him a jumping-off point. “What was it like growing up for you?”
“Uh…” He shifted, placing his elbows on his knees as he rubbed his hands together. “It was okay.” With her dubious noise next to him, he met her gaze. “My parents were very conservative, very involved with their church, and they homeschooled me and my sister.”
“Homeschooled,” Bronte said, the public school teacher choking on the word.
“Yeah, homeschooled. Me, my sister, and a bunch of other kids of families from the church. It was…” He lifted his hands, searching for an explanation. “We couldn’t go trick-or-treating because it was of the devil. We couldn’t read any books with witches or wizards. We couldn’t watch TV or listen to the radio, and what we did get was Christian and it was awful,” he said with a chuckle. Because he had some humor about it now. Although, back then it was hell. “I didn’t even have a door to my bedroom.”
“That seems extreme.”
He blew out a breath. “To say the least. As I got older, I learned real quick that wasn’t the life for me, and I hated it. My older sister, though, she seemed to love it. Did the whole white dress, father-daughter promise ring ceremony.”
Bronte’s eyes bulged. “A what ceremony?”
“All the girls had to promise to save their virginity for their husbands and sign a contract. They’d wear white dresses and dance with their dads. It was real creepy.”
“What about the boys?”
Chris sucked air through his teeth. “What do you think?”
She answered with a disgusted sound in the back of her throat.
“Since I knew how to play guitar, I was always playing for those ceremonies and church gatherings. I had bible study three times a week, youth group, all that shit. Every summer, we got sent to bible camp.” With a boastful grin, he confessed, “That’s where I first put my hand up a girl’s shirt. Maelynn Forrester, behind the girls’ bunk.”
